Massive Cyber Attack Knocks Down Major Websites Including Twitter, Reddit, NY Times and More

Dozens of major internet websites are currently undergoing a massive DDoS attack that has almost crippled the internet, western media is reporting.

It is said that a major DNS service called Dyn is being attacked that has blocked the access to websites like including:

Twitter,

Amazon,

SoundCloud,

New York Times,

Business Insider,

Netflix,

Github,

Spotify,

Heroku

Shopify,

Boston Globe,

Airbnb,

Reddit,

Freshbooks,

Vox Media properties and others.

Dyn — along with other DNS servers — act as layer of IP resolvers for URLs we type. So for instance if you type ProPakistani.PK, its the DNS server that resolves this domain name and returns an IP address that’s shown to users.

If DNS layer is attacked, it becomes impossible for URLs to be resolved and hence websites become inaccessible.

What’s DDoS Attack:

Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS) is a mechanism in which dumb data is thrown at a computer in a manner that the computer or resource becomes unavailable for other legitimate users.

Entire Internet has Become Sluggish

Even those websites that aren’t directly targeted are currently responding slow. This slowness is due to network dependencies and routing processes that involve components that are under attack.

Dyn said that it was attacked few hours ago, however, services were recovered quickly. Then a new, more serious, attack was launched almost half an hour ago (Around 10:15 PM Pakistan Time) that completely knocked down the access to the service, and ultimately many dozen websites have become inaccessible.

Our engineers continue to investigate and mitigate several attacks aimed against the Dyn Managed DNS infrastructure.

DDoS attack is reportedly targeted towards US servers — mainly throughout east cost — and that’s where the main damage has been done. Servers in Asia and Europe are to remain less impacted during the time.

Early reports are saying that this is one of the largest DDoS attacks in the history, which is still ongoing.